Cephalopod News:

Sea Life Scarborough is appealing for toys for Barbara the giant Pacific Octopus. The centre wants the public's help to fill their octopus' advent calendar with a toy every day in the run up to Christmas.

"We recently published a scientific report of octopuses living together in unusual numbers at a site on the south coast of New South Wales. Then things got a little out of hand... Octlantis is not a city, and no artworks, fences, or buildings have been made."

"Red Demon" Giant Squids of Mexico
Jaguars of the Oceans

Join us for an adventure that fewer than 20 divers a year get to experience, an underwater encounter with the Giant Squid (Dosidicus gigas) otherwise known as Red Demon squids in Mexico. Growing up to seven feet long, 150+ pounds and occasionally bigger—possibly much bigger these are the pinnacle predator of the ocean. An apex predator that even sharks stay clear of.

...We want to design a mini-robot that will carry a video camera, follow an octopus around under the water, and always keep the animal in the camera's viewfinder. Since the robot will act like a Private Eye and tail the octopus everywhere, we think it should be called Shadow.

HUMAN LYLE: You are wrong about the GIANT FOREST OCTOPUS being a myth! I HAVE SEEN IT MYSELF!!! Other Sasquatch howl that I am crazy but I KNOW WHAT I SAW!!! I was walking through the forest one night ENGAGED IN PRIVATE SASQUATCH BUSINESS THAT IS OF NO CONCERN TO NOSEY CRYPTOZOOLOGISTS when I heard the DEEP CLACKING OF A BEAK in the distance and smelled a STRONG ODOR OF AMMONIA on the wind! Then all of the sudden A GIANT ARM AS THICK AS A LOG WITH A THOUSAND SUCTION CUPS lunged out of the dense trees towards me! Although it was dark I was able to find a nearby boulder to defend myself! I SMASHED THE ARM BEFORE IT COULD GRAB ME!!! There was a GURGLING SCREECH in the distance and the arm started to retract back into the trees! Before it could get away I took a bite out of it! IT WAS DELICIOUS!!!

SILLY LOOKING HUMAN WITH STRANGE FIXATION ON MONO RAIL: Vanara would never build a mono rail! WHAT SORT OF FUNGUS HAVE YOU BEEN GATHERING?! Vanara are proud Hominoids like Sasquatch! If you ordered Sasquatch to build you a mono rail WE WOULD CRUSH EVERY ONE OF YOUR BONES and howl at your floppy corpse: "THERE'S YOUR MONO RAIL!!!" Vanara would do the same, I am sure! Anyway, IN MY HUMBLE OPINION, what Cascadia needs is a SYSTEM OF GONDOLAS traversing the forest canopy! THIS WOULD MAKE IT MUCH EASIER TO GATHER TREE OCTOPUS!!!

TYPING OCTOPUS: I know you are using one of our Hominoidnet kiosks... IF I FIND YOU I WILL EAT YOU!!!

Please allow me to direct your attention to evidence of tree octopuses in New England. Of course, this is unverified, so it may just be a red herring. Or it may be the remains of a PNWTO brought back by one of those venturesome New England sea captains of old.

New England tree octopuses, such as the Sugar Octopus, are not unknown, but none achieve anywhere near the size shown in those pictures. While there have long been rumors of giant forest octopuses in Cascadia, these have never been verified by serious cephalopodologists and are generally agreed to be the product of the over-active imaginations of hungry Sasquatch out gathering normal-sized tree octopuses.

I'm afraid that that giant "tree octopus" (much like the Cardiff giant) is a fraud -- most likely created by cryptozoologists to lure gullible Sasquatch to New England -- and not an actual petrified terrestrial octopod.

Although mating has never been observed in giant squid, it is thought that what happens is that the male injects his sperm packages into the female's arms. The process is likely to be a fairly violent affair as the female is probably not that keen on being injected. This is a problem for the amorous male as females are normally a third bigger than they are.

But males get round their inferior size by being endowed with a particularly long penis, which means they can inject the female without having to get too close to her chomping beak. The male's sexual organ is actually a bit like a high-pressure fire hose and is normally nearly as long as his body - excluding legs and head.

But having such a big penis does have one drawback: it seems that co-ordinating eight legs, two feeding tentacles and a huge penis, whilst fending off an irate female, is a bit too much to ask, and one of the two males stranded on the Spanish coast had accidentally injected himself with sperm packages in the legs and body. And this does not seem to have been an isolated incident since two of the eight males that had stranded in the north-east Atlantic before had also accidentally inseminated themselves.